Bitless Riding Art

In ancient times when the horse was still used as a steed, a perfectly trained horse made the difference between life and death at that time. Riders took their time to perfectly train their horse. The rider could, sometimes without reins, ask the horse do the hardest exercises with the lightest touch.  Of course the way to get there was not allways so horsefriendly as it sounds, sometimes cruel methods were used… Also in Baroque times, when riding became an art and different riding schools were established.

However, there were some real great horsetrainers in history that were able to train their horses in such a way that the horse was extremely supple, agile, flexible, strong and coöperative. They already understood the natural crookedness in horses and knew how to work on it.

Unfortunately, if you look at modern horseback riding, horses are often trained wrong. They suffer from discomfort, pain and premature wear, despite of the fact that most riders do have good intentions…

There simply is not always enough knowledge…

The average sport horse lives for, don’t freak out… 8 years… This is incredibly sad, especially if you know that a well-trained and healthy riding horse can perform for 30 years!

Look at the picture on the right.  This is a dramatic example taken from modern dressage, unfortunately some recreational riders follow the example to some degree…

The red arrows and circle are the places that hurt incredibly much. Rips form in the ties of the cervical vertebrae, muscular blockades in the back and bone growth on the layers in the mouth. The horse gets a headache, has trouble breathing and upsets his stomach and intestines. There is still a whole list of complications, too long to name here.

Do you want to give your riding-horse the best chances? Horsefulness Training and its Bitless Riding Art trains the horse in such a way that it can continuously positively develop to be able to carry his rider without getting overburdened in any way.

An important step in that process is gymnasticizing and straightening the horse. By means of work in hand, lunging and Bitless Riding Art you can work on the horse’s natural imbalance & crookedness, so that your horse can move in balance with you on his back.

Bitless Riding Art means that you see horseback riding as an art in which you improve yourself and your horse, so you keep training your horse to be more supple and strong, but also more elegant and proud.

You don’t want to use force and pain. Those who practice the Bitless Riding Art aim to work with the horse in harmony and have their horse be healthy and happy until a high age, taking the horse’s individual possibilities in account!

Next to knowledge on how a horse thinks and learns it is crucial to have knowledge about equine-biomechanics and equine natural croockedness of the equine-body and how to work with that.

And of course you will also have to continue developping  yourself if you want to become the best rider possible!